Different people also work better in different modes of interaction which is what I think this article papers over.
For me, reviewing code is much easier than writing it because, while the amount of codebase context stays the same in both modes, the context for writing takes up quite a bit more space in addition. I rarely get a nicely specced out issue where I can focus on writing the code, instead spending a lot of mental capacity trying to figure out how to fill in the details that were left.
Focusing on the codebase during review reallocates that context to just the codebase. My brain then pattern matches against code that’s already in front of me much easier than when writing new code. Unfortunately LLMs are largely at the junior engineer level and reviewing those PRs takes a lot more mental effort than my coworkers’.
For me, reviewing code is much easier than writing it because, while the amount of codebase context stays the same in both modes, the context for writing takes up quite a bit more space in addition. I rarely get a nicely specced out issue where I can focus on writing the code, instead spending a lot of mental capacity trying to figure out how to fill in the details that were left.
Focusing on the codebase during review reallocates that context to just the codebase. My brain then pattern matches against code that’s already in front of me much easier than when writing new code. Unfortunately LLMs are largely at the junior engineer level and reviewing those PRs takes a lot more mental effort than my coworkers’.